ENGLISH SPORT IS NOT BASED ON ORGANIZATION

"There is a fundamental difference in temperament between the English and American sportsman", declared B. McK, Henry '24, captain of the University crew in his Senior year and the following year a member of his college crew at Oxford.

"There is a tradition about sport in England", Henry went on to say, "which is not found in our highly organized and progressive system. There is a story which I think demonstrates the point I am trying to bring out about Pfann, Cornell's famous backfield man, who went to Oxford, where he took up Rugby. In Rugby there is much passing of the ball, but it is all done underhand and when Pfann and one of his former teant-mates introduced the overhand pass which is used in American football it proved to be a demoralizing innovation. In this country such an innovation in one of our popular sports, though it might endanger the future of the game, could have been coped with only by the introduction of a new rule. But not so in England. The overhead pass was accepted generally as unsportsmanlike and not in keeping with the game, thus automatically disappearing.

Ale Figures Lightly at English Table

"Another contrast between the English and American sportsman lies in the greater sense of personal discipline of the former", declared Henry. "One often hears that English athletes are surprisingly lax about training, but on that point I disagree. True, ale may be in evidence at an Oxford training table, but it is taken in small quantities, and in other respects the Englishman is more fastidious than the American.

"Nor does the English oarsman ever become overtrained; not because he puts less into his training than the American, but because he is blessed with a peculiar psychology which enables him to look on sport as sport and not as a grind. The Oxford or Cambridge 'hearty' talks rowing, thinks it and, in fact, lives for nothing else. At this point I might refer to what we would consider a most inefficient method of selecting and developing a crew. In the early fall at Oxford the president of each college boat club nominates whom he considers the two best oarsmen in his club, the coaches nominate other men whom they consider promising and from this group three so-called trial eights are formed. From this time until the big race there is hard work but there is lacking that tendency of driving which is evident in the American coaching system and which ultimately gives the American crew the impression of being a machine. But the Oxford or Cambridge eight gradually becomes a crew which for watermanship, blade work and power is equal if not superior to our usual crew."